


Genie From Brooklyn

by DoctorFitzy (KittooningMalijah)



Series: pretty boy and the punk from brooklyn [1]
Category: Overlord (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers, kind of? certain parts of the plot still happen, vague spoilers really, very few spoilery things are said outright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 01:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16587878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittooningMalijah/pseuds/DoctorFitzy
Summary: After one battle is fought, there’s always another. Sometimes, the next battle is internal, and entirely impossible to win.





	Genie From Brooklyn

**Author's Note:**

> I have seen Overlord four Times. I intend to see it quite a few more times. I have no regrets. 
> 
> I stepped out of the theater with like three new ships? And, yes, one of those ships is TibbetChase. No one is surprised because they are extremely My Type(TM). However, with this fic in particular, their relationship can be read as either platonic or romantic. It’s up to the reader.

         He was tired of bullets.

         After firing so many, getting hit by one, and waking up from death, Morton Chase never wanted to hear a gun go off again. They were being reassigned, so he supposed he'd hear a few more, but there was no guarantee he'd be reassigned anywhere near the rest of them. There was no guarantee that anyone on his new assignment would know how to handle his... _urges_. He may only be a correspondent, but he wasn't stupid. His father didn't pay for his university for him to graduate with a degree and still be stupid.

         Ford would likely go off and lead another unit, save the war all over again. Boyce and Rosenfeld would have a unit that wasn’t hindered by someone who wasn’t combat trained. Tibbet might even get to go to Berlin and put a bullet in Adolf Hitler’s skull, just like he talked about. They were all being praised as heroes, but Chase knew better — he was just the photographer. It was hard to ignore how much of his identity belonged to his camera when he'd died with it in his arms. Not that he could even use it, anymore.

         A side effect of the serum that had woken him, every sound was overwhelming when he was _hungry_. And that included the shutter of his camera, during the worst of it. He could tolerate the pain, most of the time, but some sounds got to him no matter how much he ate. Like Private James Tibbet's voice, for instance.

         He could admit that the sight was a rather cute one, considering the usually so brash and harsh private was playing a game with an eight year old, but it was hard to really appreciate the softness of the situation when his head was pounding. _Everything_ hurt, and that damn Brooklyn accent only made the pain spike until he felt like a bullet was drilling into his brain — and he liked to think he was a bit of an expert in what a bullet felt like, though all of his knowledge did include how _death by bullet_ felt.

         So, for the sake of his sanity, he tried to block out the voice of his old jump partner, squeezing his eyes shut and holding onto the leather camera case in his lap so tightly that his knuckles turned white. However, that tactic only worked for so long before aforementioned New Yorker got to his feet, leaving his apparent new friend with Rosenfeld and a deck of cards, and approached Chase’s seat.

         “How are you feeling, kid?”

         It was jarring, the hand on his shoulder and the words so close to his ear, and it was more than enough to make him flinch. The movement itself was so sudden that he nearly dropped his camera in the dirt at his feet, and even though he was able to catch it, his fingers were shaking so much that he was thankful the strap was around his neck.

         Suddenly, the hand on his shoulder moved down his arm and grabbed his elbow, gently pulling him up onto unsteady legs. His stomach flipped at the movement, a feeling just familiar enough that panic surged through him. He could feel the skin on his arms growing tighter while his veins protruded under his jacket. The feeling spread down to his hands, but he couldn’t focus on it for very long while he was being led quickly away from the tent and into the nearest building.

         A part of him pointed out that the kitchen they were in definitely didn’t belong to the woman who had been helping them since they’d gotten there, but Tibbet didn’t seem to care whether or not they were technically welcome in the space.

         There was already a cup of water being pushed into his hands, and the seat seemed to materialize under him. His head was hurting worse, and he suppose he owed his lost minutes to that, but it was still something he didn’t exactly want his thoughts to linger on. Everything seemed to blur together, and it felt like only a few seconds before he could focus again, but based on the sharply accented words reaching his ears and the look of concern on the usually collected private’s face, it had been much longer than that.

         “...in there, pretty boy? Come on, kid, how many fingers am I holding up? Can you focus on that for a second or are you gonna bite into them like you devoured that loaf of bread, huh?”

         Blinking, Chase looked down long enough to see the mess of crumbs in his lap, a sign that he had definitely eaten, even if he didn’t remember the act. After that, he did make his gaze focus on the fingers — four of them — moving in front of his face, mumbling out the number while the ache in the middle of his skull faded into nothing again.

         “Good, good...” With hands on the photographer’s shoulders, Tibbet nodded his head and offered up a small smile, likely an attempt to be reassuring. Emotional support in any capacity didn’t seem to be his strong suit. “Okay, so you had food, you had water — is there anything else you need? A bathroom break? A poorly timed photo shoot? A shot of good whiskey? Anything at all?”

         Despite the lingering fear in his chest — a feeling he knew would _never_ fade, no matter how well he could manage his headaches and hunger — he did manage a laugh at the offers before finding his voice again. “Anything? Really?”

         With a more enthusiastic smile, Tibbet nodded his head, and for once, his accent didn’t seem quite so grating. “Anything at all. Consider me your genie — you got food and water, so you’ve got one more wish left. Make it a good one.”

          _Anything at all_ . The words seemed too broad to really cover the things his jump partner — _friend_ , now, really — was actually capable of doing for him, but it still made him think. He had one wish, and he better make it all worth it, because after spending so long with the man in front of him, he knew the offer would likely never come around again. But the only thing he _really_ wanted wasn’t something that _anyone_ could get for him, let alone a mouthy paratrooper from Brooklyn, even if that paratrooper had been ready to kill a man in his name. It was something that might have been a possibility before the church and the tar pit underneath it had been destroyed, but not anymore. The one thing he wanted to use his last wish for was something he could never have—

         “I wish I was still human.”


End file.
